by J. J. Fowler
“I want everyone ready to fight,” Vlad ordered.
Chapter Seven
Inside Forward Operating Base Alpha’s control room, several soldiers talked frantically into their headsets as they typed away on archaic computers. The control room was remarkably different than the rest of the base. It was well lit with pristine white walls, sparklingly clean floors, and devoid of moisture because the air conditioning system hummed twenty-four hours a day. Colonel Tarte cared little for the conditions in the rest of the base, but his control room must be neat, must be comfortable, and must have a UV room so he could soak up the rays the sun no longer provided. In other words, it was his private little Freetoria.
The fifty-two-year-old colonel played with his mustache while he watched the situation unfolding at Echo Two on the giant monitor in the front of the room. A tiny “X” on the monitor was labeled “Echo Two.” Dozens of tiny red dots representing zombies approached the few green dots representing Drake’s squad.
Standing next to Tarte, the diminutive, yet muscular second-in-command, Lieutenant Colonel Dagos said, “Their situation looks grim.”
“Doesn’t it?” the colonel replied without a trace of worry. Several of the red dots disappeared.
“Captain Toshiro is on his way with a platoon of reinforcements, sir.”
“I feel this a waste of valuable reinforcements,” Tarte said. “Need I remind you we lost nearly an entire regiment last week fighting in this blasted city?”
“I apologize, sir, but I felt the base would be exposed if the deaders broke through. I thus ordered Captain Toshiro to Drake’s aide.”
Colonel Tarte cleared his throat and lit a cigar.
“Drake will be fine, as always. Order Captain Toshiro back to base.” Tarte walked out of the control area into his UV room to leave behind a bewildered Dagos.
Dagos did the only thing he could, and relayed the colonel’s orders to the communications personnel. He felt he was betraying Drake by doing so. Drake was a soldier he admired. Yet he dared not cross the colonel. No one crossed the colonel without terrible, oftentimes fatal, repercussions.
Chapter Eight
The situation for Drake’s team was becoming increasingly desperate. They had so far been lucky in pushing the horde back, but many of the zombies simply stood back up after being wounded only in the arms, legs, or abdomen. Drake knew it was imperative to shoot them in the head.
“Miguel!”
An anxious Miguel looked at his captain.
“Make sure you hit them in the goddamned head!” Drake barked.
Miguel nodded and went back to shooting.
“Sir!” Murphy called out. “Sir, Tram is running out of ammunition!”
“Then shoot less!” Drake hollered. Two zombies leapt up on the monument in front of Drake. He blasted one in the right eye and the other in the mouth. The deaders instantly fell off, but another one jumped in to take their place and lunged at Drake.
Drake smashed it in the face with the butt of his rifle and the ghoul twisted back from the blow and tumbled off the monument.
This is not looking good, Drake thought. Where the hell is Alpha?
“Casey, what the fuck is Alpha saying?” Drake hollered.
“Nothing, sir! They’re not responding!”
“Then get up here and fight,” Drake ordered.
“Okay, sir!”
Casey put the radio down and took out his M-16. Casey hated doing actual fighting because he was a terrible shot, though he knew that six of them against this sizeable horde required him to get behind the trigger.
* * *
Miguel placed his crosshairs on a one-armed zombie charging toward them. It was a female deader with faded, pink hair still tied into one long ponytail. He fired and blew off its remaining arm.
“Dammit!” Miguel yelled.
He aimed again and depressed the trigger. Nothing. Miguel was out of ammo. Miguel patted his pockets for more ammo. Nothing.
Twenty meters in front of Miguel, a trained zombie with a red bandana around its decaying forehead took aim with its rifle and fired. Miguel lurched back from the impact of the zombie’s bullet. He felt the horrendous burning from the shoulder wound, yet knew he must act fast to stay alive. He pulled out his pistol with his good arm and fired into the horde.
Drake looked over at Miguel and noticed his shoulder wound.
“Mifune! Get to Miguel!”
Mifune, who stood next to Drake, fired his assault rifle, patted Drake on the shoulder, and ran to Miguel.
“You okay there, bud?” Mifune asked Miguel. The latter blasted a nearby zombie in the face.
“Yes, sir,” Miguel said confidently.
“Okay, then.” Mifune reached into his pocket and took out a pistol clip and put it in Miguel’s pocket. “You’re going to need this.”
“Thanks, sergeant.”
As soon as Mifune turned to resume his position next to Drake, a zombie reached up to grab one of Miguel’s legs and pull him off the monument into a mass of voracious zombies.
Mifune heard Miguel’s terrified screams and spun around only to see him being torn to shreds by the ravenous beasts.
“Bastards!” Mifune screamed while blazing away with his assault rifle.
“Mifune!” Drake screamed. “Short, controlled bursts!”
Mifune turned to Drake with tears in his eyes.
“They got him! They got him!”
“Then take his position!” Drake ordered.
Mifune said nothing and went back to shooting at the enemy—this time with more control.
Drake pulled out a grenade, the only grenade the platoon possessed because of a chronic shortage of them at Alpha, and tossed it into the horde. It failed to explode.
Oh fuck! Drake thought. If we don’t get more men soon, we’re screwed.
Just then a bullet singed a black line across his stomach. The firing from the deaders was getting more intense.
“We’re out of ammo!” yelled Murphy. He looked terrified. His hands shook and his face was as pale as the dead. Tears of fear streamed out his bloodshot eyes. “What do we do?”
Tram collapsed next to him in terrible, agonizing pain from several gunshot wounds to his abdomen.
“We fight!” replied Drake.
“With what?” Tram whispered to Murphy.
“Don’t worry, Tram,” Murphy said without believing his own words. “I have you, I have you.”
A zombie pushed itself atop the monument. Murphy took Tram’s pistol and shot it in the head.
“We’re gonna die here, Murph,” Tram whispered. “If you have a god, let him know.”
Murphy ignored Tram’s advice. He wanted to live. Besides, he thought, he didn’t believe or know any god. All he knew was the life he had and how he wanted to keep it, despite the horrible, seemingly futile conditions around him.
As Murphy fired at the enemy, his mind raced with images of Freetoria—the pearly white skyscrapers, his friends sipping beer in cafes, his girlfriend kissing him gently, his parents sobbing as he left for the Army, and of his joys spending time in the library reading classics. All that was so remote to him now, dead to him as he faced oblivion at this remote post in the midst of a zombie hell. He hoped his death would be for something—for protecting his family, friends, humanity overall, but he wasn’t sure. What he did know was he wanted to live. He’d fight to the bitter end with his comrades.
Then it happened.
A hail of gunfire poured down into the deaders’ flanks. A miracle, Murphy thought. Maybe there is some sort of god. Maybe this god has come to save us.
“It’s Alpha!” yelled Mifune.
Drake was overjoyed too. Out of ammo, he had resorted to using his machete to defend himself and his men. The fire rained down on the deaders from left and right as Drake slashed and cut into the zombies around them. They were winning.
Drake saw a zombie pounce on Mifune. Its mouth was open and its black teeth were getting close to Mifune’s ex
posed neck. Drake knew he didn’t have a moment to waste. He threw his machete at the zombie. It crashed into the goon’s skull and killed the beast instantly.
Mifune pushed the creature off of him and looked at Drake with eyes revealing the terror he felt inside him.
A bullet whizzed past Drake’s ear and struck a zombie in the head milliseconds before the creature’s teeth hit Drake’s shoulder. Drake whipped around just as its bloodied head crashed upon his feet.
* * *
Minutes later, the zombie attackers were all lifelessly sprawled around Drake and his surviving troopers. Drake heaved a sigh of relief.
He looked at their saviors with strained eyes trying to make out the shadowy figures to which he owed his life. They stared at him too for a few seconds before disappearing into the Longest Midnight.
Where are they going? Drake thought. Why aren’t they coming down here?
Then Drake heard a gunshot.
Murphy threw Tram’s pistol to the ground. There was a neat hole in Tram’s head with smoke coming out of it. A small river of blood flowed down his face.
The battle was over.
Chapter Nine
The same nightmare plagued Drake every time he closed his eyes since that fateful, terrible night when he was a child. His father was a drunk, a notoriously violent drunk. He beat his mother and Drake regularly. Despite that, Drake loved him dearly. When his father was sober, which was rare enough, he was the kindest and gentlest man in Freetoria. He would play games with Drake, cook dinner for the family, and tell the funniest jokes. However, in his dreams, all Drake recalled was that horrible night.
The official story was his father stumbled home one evening from a local bar in the slums of Freetoria. The Execution Squads, a necessity in a world where the dead came back to devour the living, mistook Drake’s tripping and mumbling father for a deader and shot him dead. They warned him they were about to fire, but his father ignored them, or so they claimed on their report. Drake never believed them and those who knew his father didn’t either. His father was a drunk, for certain; however, he was a drunk who knew better than to cross the Execution Squads patrolling the streets.
The authorities found his father a nuisance. He consistently protested the laws against the poor arming themselves the way the rich did, and he believed the Execution Squads were far too draconian in the slums. They tended to shoot first before knowing the facts, and many an uninfected man, woman, or child had paid the price. His father’s organized protests drew thousands in the weeks before his death. The Freetoria Council had taken notice of his growing popularity.
Was it murder? Did they assassinate him? Drake could never prove it, but in his heart, he knew they killed him.
* * *
In Drake’s nightmare, he saw his father tripping over himself from extreme inebriation, only to stumble upon a group of trigger-happy Executors patrolling the slums. His father’s drunken mind knew it was best to avoid them. He waved his hands and spoke to indicate he was human. The Executors, sent on a mission to kill the drunken troublemaker, could use as a cover his father’s intoxicated state. It was, after all, not the first time a stumbling drunkard was confused for a deader and shot to death.
They depressed their triggers. Bullets tore through his father’s stomach, chest, and face until what collapsed onto the pavement was nothing but an unrecognizable gun-raped corpse.
Drake heard the shots and ran out of their small shack, knowing his father was the victim of the gunshots. He paused when he saw the body lying on the pavement in a pool of blood. Then he walked closer toward the corpse until one of the Executors told him to halt. The flamethrowers breathed their death fire on the mangled remains of his father.
In his nightmare, Drake watched his father burn. He smelt his father’s flesh. He smelt everything his father had fought for turn to ashes. The abuse was over, but he knew it wasn’t his father that beat him and his mother. It was the frustration of being human in a world of the dead and trying to raise a family. It was the frustration of constantly working to make ends meet as some of his fellow living humans did everything they could to keep him poor and themselves rich. What kind of life was that?
Drake’s father often joked that things must be easier as a brainless deader, shuffling around with a singular focus on their deceased minds—human flesh. Being a poor, workingman in Freetoria meant a plethora of endless problems. Besides, his father mused, at least the deaders didn’t fuck each other over the way humans do at nearly every opportunity. How can humans do this even when faced with the prospect of extinction? Maybe the zombies deserved this world after all.
* * *
Drake’s eyes opened. At first, he couldn’t remember where he was. Then his eyes adjusted and he realized he was in his private quarters inside Alpha. Few troopers enjoyed the comfort of personal quarters in this godforsaken base. Drake’s long service at Alpha eventually motivated the colonel to reward him with his own quarters.
The room was tiny, so tiny that all it could fit was a six-foot long cot, a desk, and a chair. A single perpetually flickering fluorescent bulb lit the room. The air was humid and stale since his room lacked air conditioning, much like the rest of the base. Overall though, Drake didn’t mind. He was able to enjoy privacy, unlike most of the men.
Drake sat up and swung his legs over the side of the cot. He checked his watch, did the math, and realized he had slept for nearly fourteen hours. There was a bandage across his stomach from the minor wound he suffered during the previous day’s carnage. Drake gently touched his wound, stood up, and stared into the blinking light above him.
Drake wanted to smash his fist into it. Why hadn’t the supply officer replaced it? He’d asked him at least a dozen times to do so, but nothing ever changed in Alpha. Drake stopped himself from destroying it when he realized it might take a month or more for the inefficient and lazy supply officer to replace it. He didn’t want to sit in the dark, after all.
Someone knocked on his door.
“Enter,” Drake said hoarsely.
The door opened to reveal Sergeant Mifune.
“How are you doing, Captain?”
“Helluva hangover. You, Sergeant?”
“I’m fine, sir,” Mifune replied in an unusually formal manner.
“Are you?”
“Well, sir, we don’t have much of a platoon left. Do we?”
“Nope, but we’ve been through this before.”
“The replacements aren’t coming like they used to, sir.”
“Yup.”
Both men were silent a moment. Drake sensed there was something else behind Mifune’s visit.
“What is it, Mifune?”
Mifune hesitated, unsure exactly how to word his announcement to his longtime commander. Then he blurted, “I want out, sir.”
Drake cleared his throat and lit a cigarette.
“Want out of what?”
“The Army.”
“Now ain’t a good time for that.”
“I need you to approve the paperwork please.”
Drake took a deep drag, and examined Mifune’s frightened, exhausted eyes.
“Okay. If that’s what you want, I’ll sign it, but the colonel has ultimate approval.”
“I know.”
“Is that it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right then. Get out so I can pass out again for a few.”
Mifune left without saying a word.
Chapter Ten
Drake entered the cavernous, white, painted control room and scanned it for Colonel Tarte. Even though Drake was a regular visitor to the control room, the stark differences between it and the rest of Alpha always amazed him. He loved feeling the cool, dry environment against his skin, tasting the fresh fruit and meat in the well-stocked kitchen, and getting lost in the perfectly clean white walls versus the shit-stained grey walls elsewhere in Alpha. Ah, this is the life, he thought.
A middle-aged man with a toned and tanned body, salt
-and-pepper hair, and grey mustache examined a giant, digital map displayed on the massive monitor in the front of the room. Drake approached. “Excuse me, sir?” Colonel Tarte was in remarkable shape for a man who ran a base on the edge of hell. He turned around and looked Drake up and down.
“You’ve looked better, Drake,” Tarte said rather snidely.
Tarte and Drake were constantly at odds with one another. When Drake felt Alpha’s men should zig, Tarte always ordered them to zag. Consequently, the two engaged in numerous arguments behind closed doors. However, Drake respected Tarte as a leader. At least he did until yesterday. He never thought Tarte would abandon him and his men to die like he did at the ruins the previous day.
“Thank you, sir, I’ve certainly been treated better,” Drake replied coldly.
It was obvious Tarte knew what Drake meant. His smug grin turned into a frown.
“I need to speak with you, Captain. My UV room.”
Drake had never been in Tarte’s UV room. Lieutenant Colonel Dagos was the only one Drake knew had. He was either being invited in to have his ass chewed out, or Tarte wanted to tell him something in secrecy.
“Yes, sir,” Drake replied cautiously.
* * *
Drake regularly used the crowded, public UV room everyone else on base used. A trooper normally waited hours to get some UV exposure time, and more often than not, the lights were broken. It was, to say the least, frustrating for the men stationed at Alpha.
Naturally, Colonel Tarte’s UV room was quite the opposite. It had well-maintained, UV lights hanging overhead. A giant mural of a sunny beach with a giant wave about to splash on the hot sand surrounded much of the room. Drake knew such a sight was impossible today now that the sun was blocked by the destruction wreaked upon the Earth during the early years of the war. Even so, the mural mesmerized him. He wondered if any human would ever see such a sight again on Earth.
Drake gazed up at the massive ceiling fifteen meters high, and then at the more than half-a-dozen UV lamps blasting down their warmth and much-needed rays. There was a couch in the center and a coffee table in front of it with various kinds of expensive alcohol. It was a known fact the colonel imported alcohol and other luxuries from the wealthy areas of Freetoria. Tarte handed Drake a pair of sunglasses, a rare object in a world with little sunlight.